by Sarah S.
lamps and books, nothing more symbolic than that. Things that might
have rightful places around this new house, on tables and windowsills
and shelves. She would find the yellow box cutter in the drawer in the
kitchen and extend the blade. And one by one she would slice open
each box, all eight of them. The packing tape would splice in two. The
cardboard flaps would flop free. Dust would emerge from the boxes, surely collected from her old apartment and the storage unit and the
moving truck and this house, too.
It would be enough for the night just to open them and then stand
back. And she would think about the invisible dust as it floated into
the air, carried by the currents inside the house, exploring every room,
joining and combining and spreading and settling somewhere new.
And she would realize, standing there, that this thing with her and
Charles, this trouble, it was a crack, but it wasn’t a break. Just like
everything else, it too would pass.
………………………………………………………… twenty-one
The first few nights after Scott left, Sylvie thought he was just staying with friends in the city. But his mail began to pile up. A UPS box remained on his doorstep until she finally
brought it inside, and, after enough time, opened it. Inside was a pair of yellow high-top Nikes wrapped in butcher paper. She set them at his place at the table, side by side next to his plate.
When Sylvie dared to enter her son’s empty suite, she was astonished to find it clean. It was as if he’d used a toothbrush to scrape off every bit of grime. Everything was put away. The floors were vacuumed. His bed was made. She ran her finger along the dust-free television, disappointed. She wanted to see it tumultuous and grungy, the way he’d lived. It didn’t even smell like him. It looked like a rental, a hotel room.
Sometimes she sat at the kitchen table and wrote him letters, though she had nowhere to send them. They were mostly filled with platitudes. I hope you’re okay. We’re thinking about you. And, as time went on, maybe you haven’t heard what happened. You can have your job back, if you want it.
Once, she drank too much red wine and wrote him a letter that said, over and over, how sorry she was, how this was never how she imagined things would turn out, how if she could rewind everything and do it all again, she would. She would do anything for him. She would change what needed changing. The letter remained on the table until the next morning; when she woke up, she found Charles in the kitchen, having stopped over to check on her. They met eyes, and Charles turned away. He had read it. She didn’t blame him. After that, he and Joanna began coming over more often, mostly for dinners, but sometimes after dinner, just to watch TV.
The house wasn’t the same without him. For years Sylvie had been cringing at the loud booms from the television, the speedy, guttural music from the stereo, the people that showed up in the middle of the night. She’d pressed her fingernails into her palm, hating his puerile ways, certain her neighbors, distant as they were, would hear the sounds and cringe. But now, she felt like slapping the silence.
She could hear every breath she took. Every swallow. She hated the noises of her chewing. She heard the mailman’s truck at the bottom of the hill and sometimes even the cows mooing in the pasture a half-mile away. Some sounds scared her—creaks, ghostly footsteps, an anonymous crash whose origin she never identified. One night, she tried sleeping with her biggest Wusthof knife under her pillow, but she worried that she might roll over in the night and inadvertently stab herself.
She thought about getting a dog.
The day after she talked to Christian’s father at Feverview Dwellings, she wrote her official Swithin board resignation. After the board received it, several members called to ask what on earth had come over her. They all acted so meticulously neutral. They feigned puzzlement when Sylvie told them she wanted to do other things for a while. Travel. Volunteer. Go back to school. She played her part, politely not impugning any of them, not saying, I know you wanted me to do exactly this. You can’t fool me. Only Martha tipped her hand—Is this because of that boy’s death, Sylvie? We knew that would blow over. We knew you and your son weren’t involved. Was someone saying he was? Who would say something like that?
A week later, Sylvie was walking around her favorite gardening store, staring at the violets in their paper tubs, the fledgling trees held up by posts, the soft, massive bags of soil stacked in the corner. Someone tugged her arm. It was a Swithin teacher, though Sylvie couldn’t place her. “Angela Curtis,” the woman reminded her. “I teach art.”
Angela had been part of the committee who was supposed to meet with Scott. Supposed. “I guess you know he didn’t show up,” Angela said, shrugging. “It was a moot point by then, of course, since the medical examiner had turned in her report that day.”
“The autopsy came back?” Sylvie exclaimed. No one had told her.
Angela pressed her hand to her mouth, surprised that Sylvie didn’t know. She probably didn’t know Sylvie had resigned from the board either. “You should probably talk to Michael Tayson about this,” she backpedaled and rushed away.
In the end Sylvie didn’t need to ask anyone about the autopsy; the results came out in the newspaper the following day, splashed across the front page of the local section. Another MRSA infection claims private school boy, fifteen. There was Christian’s school picture with his joker green hair. And the caption underneath: “Deadly MethicillinResistant Staphylococcus Aureus bacteria, or MRSA, infect more than 90,000 Americans each year.”
The bacteria could be carried by healthy people, said the article, living in their skin or in their noses. The coroner guessed that the bacteria had entered an open wound on Christian’s skin and traveled into the bloodstream, lodging in his lungs. There were sores on his stomach, the coroner said, which was most likely the entry point. This kind of infection was common in sports teams, especially when they shared equipment and mats that weren’t regularly washed. The article mentioned the health department and the Swithin school board. There was a quote from Geoff, vowing that the board hadn’t been aware of this tragic oversight, and that the school was now doing everything possible to prevent further MRSA outbreaks. The school would be closed for two days while a commercial cleaning service came in and scoured the place from top to bottom.
Sylvie stared at the article for a long time. According to what both the story and Angela said, the autopsy results had been released the day of Scott’s meeting. That was the day of Geoff’s party, too. The day Tayson had cornered her and accused her and told her that she should make it go away. And yet, they’d kept it from her. They’d let her think what she wanted to think, for if she knew the truth, she never would have sought out Warren Givens. Perhaps Tayson had hoped that Sylvie was so terrified Mr. Givens was going to point fingers at Scott, she would blindly hand him a check. All the while, Mr. Givens, who was aware of the autopsy results full well by then, would assume that Sylvie, the chairman of the board, was compensating him for the MRSA infection Christian had contracted at Swithin, that the money was reparation for his loss. Maybe Tayson had thought Sylvie would just thrust a check at Mr. Givens, too mortified to get into details. Well, he was almost right—she practically had done that. She certainly hadn’t wanted to rehash the accusations, which meant Mr. Givens would have had no opportunity to explain where she had it wrong.
It had almost happened that way. Tayson had almost tricked both of them.
“You could sue,” Charles said to her when she explained what had happened. “They manipulated you. You could oust Tayson and get your job back.”
Though Sylvie considered it for a moment, she realized she didn’t want her job anymore. Not that job, not in its current iteration. Too much was lost.
But if Scott didn’t have anything to do with this, why hadn’t he gone to the meeting? Sh
e brought it up once to Joanna and Charles. What did Scott think he knew about the wrestling boys that, eventually, made him leave town? Was there hazing? Why would he have just taken off like that otherwise? Joanna had poked at her dinner for a while, and then said, “Maybe he just wanted us to think there was something else to the story about the boys and the wrestling team, and that was why he was running away. Instead of, you know, just picking up and leaving because he simply didn’t want to be here.”
At first, Sylvie threw out that possibility—people didn’t do that. But she wondered what would hurt worse—knowing that Scott had abetted in something or realizing that Scott just wanted nothing to do with them anymore. The first option carried disappointment and shame, but the second carried personal guilt. There might have been more she could have done to keep him here. It startled her when she realized which option she preferred to believe.
Resigning from the board stopped her life abruptly. Suddenly there were no meetings. No obligatory parties. Other things halted, too—they decided not to go on a family vacation to Cape May, and Charles and Joanna began tentatively planning a trip of their own to St Lucia. Charles had put down a deposit on a six-night stay in a seaside bungalow there; he would be able to write off some of it as expenses, he explained, because he was working on a story for the Philadelphia Inquirer about a Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s vacation home also on the island. It’s a start, he said. At least it’s a writing clip. After he quit his job—he didn’t get into why, only that he wasn’t cut out for advertising—Charles followed an Inquirer editor around until he paid attention to him, even crashing an office party he knew the editor was attending. It could have been a disaster, Charles told Sylvie, but I think the guy was kind of proud of me. I think it showed him I was serious.
When Charles came over for dinner, Joanna sometimes called in the middle—she was often in Maryland, visiting her recuperating mother and her mother’s new boyfriend, Robert. Charles and Joanna had decided to move back to Philadelphia, putting their house up for sale. While they waited for it to sell, they met with Philadelphia Realtors, looking at different apartments, comparing square footage, pet policies, and twenty-four-hour doormen.
One weekend in mid-June, Charles decided to join Joanna in Maryland. Before he left, he kept asking Sylvie if she’d be all right. Did she need anything from the store? Should he bring her some DVDs to watch? Could she call a neighbor if something happened? Stop it, Sylvie kept telling him. I’ll be fine. I’m used to being alone.
She drove to his house and saw him off, needlessly helping him pack his car and lock up his house. Before Charles got into his car, he gave her a long, contemplative look. “There’s something we need to talk about one of these days.”
“What?” she asked. He rattled the keys in his hand. “It’s nothing I want to get into right now. It’s just … we need to have a long talk.”
She watched as he backed out of the driveway and started down the street. Was it a reference to the girl? Did Charles know? If he did, did she want to know? It seemed better just to let it go.
As his car disappeared around the corner, a fist formed in her chest. A weekend was forty-eight hours long, which seemed like an eternity. But there were plenty of things to do. Cleaning and organizing, preparing elaborate dinners, re-reading her grandfather’s markedup copy of Anna Karenina. Dismantling that tent in the yard—it was still there from when Charles had built it a few months ago. Sometimes she peered inside the tent, searching out James’s initials on the canvas. She kept telling herself she’d sleep in it on a warm night, but so far she hadn’t.
She got back into her car. First she drove to Swithin. There it was, still standing without her. The flag flapped from the flagpole, no longer half-mast. One of the landscapers was hunched over the bushes, pruning. Another was on a riding mower. Sometimes they had camps here in the summer, but she didn’t see any children in the fields. Sylvie had tried her best not to inquire about how the school had weathered the MRSA news, but she could guess the repercussions. Parents had very likely thrown a fit, horrified that an institution they paid so much money to send their children to could be so negligent. It was possible some had pulled their kids out. It was possible other students had contracted little MRSA pustules on their skin, too—it was highly contagious, the article said—and that their parents had demanded the school pay for their medical treatment. Enrollment might be down for next year. In the fall certain colleges might overlook Swithin applicants. The board would have to answer a lot of questions, for they’d recorded every meeting, the software on Martha’s husband’s computer translating their conversations verbatim, the tapes immediately going into the school’s files. An investigation would uncover that there was even discussion about purchasing new sports equipment at the last meeting—Sylvie remembered it well—and the board had laughingly glossed over it.
Sylvie thought she’d feel some satisfaction that Tayson and the others were under the microscope, but her insides just felt scooped out and raw. She felt sorry for the school, festering with so many germs, cruelly neglected. It had happened under her watch, after all. This was the only thing she was responsible for, and she had blown it. She felt sorry for Scott having to go through this for something that had nothing to do with him, too. She even felt a little sorry for herself. She couldn’t help it.
She could only idle at the school for a few minutes before it became too much to bear. After that, because she didn’t want to go home yet, she drove out to Kimberton, which was above the turnpike. It was simply somewhere to go, a place that had no emotional ties to any part of her life. The houses there were small and crooked, many with green carpet on the porch steps and lacy curtains in the windows. There were still corner bars and a tiny, family-run grocery store, though a Wal-Mart also loomed on the hill just outside the town. She’d brought her camera, and she walked around a little park taking pictures of kids on swings, people’s dogs, a couple sitting on a park bench. No one told her to stop or insisted she was being intrusive. What a sweet, lonely lady, their smiles said. Maybe they even threw in old—Sylvie suddenly felt the weight of her years. She wore a string of pearls around her neck, which probably made her look older than fifty-eight. And she wore nylons under her skirt even though they made her legs and crotch sweat. She’d dressed this way for years, but suddenly it seemed so burdensome. Ducking into the park’s public restroom, she unclasped the pearls from her neck and dropped them in her purse. She peeled off the nylons and stuffed them into the trash can.
There was a little pavilion at the bottom of the hill decorated with white bunting and streamers. A Madonna song was playing, and a couple of guys in suits loitered under the awning. At first she thought it was just a party, but then she saw a girl in a long, lacy white dress fidgeting with flowers. The inside of the pavilion was lined with chairs. All the men were tattooed up and down their arms, and all the women wore strappy dresses and lots of necklaces. Makeup prevailed on both sexes. A few people had brought dogs, fat golden retrievers with bandannas around their necks, a little papillon with feather-duster ears. The Madonna song continued, and finally the girl in the lacy white dress looped her arm around an older, hippie-ish man with a white beard—her father, Sylvie presumed. They started wedding marching down the aisle.
Sylvie took a picture. She couldn’t help it. The groom was sitting on a picnic table at the front of the pavilion. There was an officiant in a long, tie-dyed gown, reading from a ragged piece of lined paper. Sylvie took a picture of a baby in only a diaper, sitting next to his long-haired parents. She took another picture of the beaming father, giving the bride a big kiss. The newly married couple proceeded out to another Madonna song—that peppy one during that phase where she was into yoga—pumping their fists and grinning. Everyone clapped. When the couple saw Sylvie and her camera, they walked right up to her. She backed away, feeling like an invader.
“Can we see?” the groom asked. He was more lithe than his new wife, with thinning brown hair an
d square glasses. “We didn’t hire a photographer.”
Both leaned over the viewfinder. The bride nodded, pleased. “I’m Samara.” She thrust her hand out. Her nails were painted blue.
“Sylvie.”
“Do you want to come to our reception?”
Sylvie shook her head fast. “I’m not really a photographer.”
“No, as a guest. You don’t have to take pictures if you don’t want to.”
Sylvie fluttered her hands, scrambling for some excuse.
“His mom’s a chef,” the girl insisted, pointing to her new husband. “She did all the food. We have a bluegrass band coming. And there are cupcakes.”
The reception was in a barn even farther out in the country. Early-summer crickets were chirping, and there were a few goats and chickens wandering around. Most of the guests took off their shoes and walked around in the dirt. One old man didn’t leave the dance floor once. In the middle of a polka, he suddenly dropped to his knees, crawling around on the floor. Sylvie tensed, wondering if he’d had a stroke. Then the news rippled through the barn—Paul had lost his teeth again. Soon everyone was crawling on the dance floor, looking for Paul’s teeth. The polka kept playing. People laughed. No one seemed concerned about germs. Dangers like MRSA seemed very far away. A little girl found the dentures under a table, apparently kicked there by some overzealous dancer. She raised them above her head, running into the middle of the dance floor. The toothless man picked her up and spun her around. He wiped off the teeth and popped them back into his mouth. Sylvie found herself smiling, laughing along with everyone else. And then in the next second, she became very aware of what she was doing. It was as though as soon as she’d peeled those nylons off her legs, something had altered in her. Here she was taking pictures of Paul and his newly found teeth. Here she was eating an extra cupcake and drinking a third glass of wine.
